Staxly

LangSmith vs CircleCI

LLM observability, testing & evaluation — by LangChain
vs. Fast, configurable CI/CD with Docker, ARM, GPU runners and orbs

LangSmith websiteCircleCI website

Pricing tiers

LangSmith

Developer (Free)
Free forever. 5,000 traces/month. 14-day retention. 1 seat. Basic evaluations.
Free
Plus
$39/seat/month. 10k base traces included ($2.50 per 1k overage). Full evaluations, custom dashboards, email support.
$39/mo
Enterprise
Custom. Self-host option, SSO, custom retention, dedicated support.
Custom
LangSmith website

CircleCI

Free
$0. 6,000 build minutes/mo (Linux medium). 30 users. Unlimited projects.
Free
Performance
$15/mo (3 users). Credit-based: 80K-240K credits/mo bundles. More concurrency.
$15/mo
Scale
$2,000/mo+ (custom). High concurrency, self-hosted runner support, SSO.
$2000/mo
CircleCI Server
Custom. On-prem deployment of CircleCI. Enterprise only.
Custom
CircleCI website

Free-tier quotas head-to-head

Comparing developer on LangSmith vs free on CircleCI.

MetricLangSmithCircleCI
No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers.

Features

LangSmith · 14 features

  • AlertsThreshold alerts on latency, cost, eval metrics.
  • Annotation QueuesHuman-review workflows for trace quality rating.
  • Custom DashboardsAggregate metrics dashboards per project/tag.
  • DatasetsCollect examples → use as eval sets or training data.
  • EvaluationsLLM-as-judge, embedding similarity, custom Python evaluators, offline batch eval
  • LangChain IntegrationAuto-trace any LangChain/LangGraph run with env var.
  • LangGraph IntegrationFirst-class trace + eval for LangGraph agents.
  • LLM TracingAutomatic trace every LLM call + tool call + chain step.
  • OpenTelemetry ExportExport traces as OTLP to Datadog/Honeycomb/etc.
  • PlaygroundTest prompts + models inline before deploying.
  • Prompt CanvasVisual prompt editor with live test + eval.
  • Prompt HubPublic + private prompt library with versioning.
  • Self-Hosted (Enterprise)Docker + k8s deployment in your infra.
  • Threads + SessionsGroup traces into conversational sessions.

CircleCI · 17 features

  • ARM + GPU RunnersARM64 + T4 GPU resource classes.
  • .circleci/config.ymlSingle source of truth (YAML 2.1).
  • ContextsOrg-scoped shared env vars.
  • Deploy MarkersTrack deployments + rollback.
  • Docker Layer CachingReuse Docker layers.
  • Dynamic ConfigGenerate config based on changed paths.
  • Manual ApprovalGate workflows with manual step.
  • Matrix JobsParameterized parallel jobs.
  • OrbsPackaged reusable jobs + commands.
  • ParallelismSplit a job across N parallel containers.
  • Rerun with SSHSSH into failed job.
  • Restricted ContextsRBAC for secrets.
  • Scheduled PipelinesCron-triggered runs.
  • Self-Hosted RunnersOn your infra.
  • Test InsightsFlaky test detection + trends.
  • Test SplittingBy timings, filenames, classnames.
  • Workflows (DAG)Fan out, fan in, conditional.

Developer interfaces

KindLangSmithCircleCI
CLILangSmith CLIcircleci CLI
SDKlangsmith-js, langsmith-python
RESTLangSmith REST APICircleCI REST API v2
MCPLangSmith MCP
OTHERLangSmith Dashboard.circleci/config.yml, CircleCI Orbs Registry, CircleCI Webhooks, CircleCI Web UI, Self-Hosted Runner
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Some links to LangSmith and CircleCI may be affiliate links — Staxly may earn a commission if you sign up through them, at no extra cost to you. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.

Want this comparison in your AI agent's context? Install the free Staxly MCP server.